What Is Left?

The Caps don't need to win. But it hurts to see them skate through the final period of a pretty-much-must-win playoff game looking like they don't care.

What draws me to hockey is this:  you FIGHT! And no matter what happens, no matter what the odds, no matter if you're bruised or broken or twisted or bleeding, you struggle to make the right choices and you fight until the end.

It's a beautiful metaphor for life. You may not win. Hey - let's face it - most of us don't. You're often up against forces that are larger and stronger than yourself. But you keep fighting. You don't stop skating, or thinking, a quarter of the way through the third period. You keep thinking, you keep talking with your teammates, you keep playing hard, you keep fighting.

And if you do that, then even if you loose - hey, this year 29 out of 30 NHL teams will NOT win the Stanley Cup! - you deserve to be proud.

I just want to feel proud of my team.

What is left at the bitter end, in the dusty display case of life: Some old hockey pants and a stick, a jersey or two - and, if you've earned it, PRIDE!

Playoffs 2010: It's all a fan can do; or, a review of some favorite hockey clichés

So what's up with my home team?  What's up with my Capitals?

It's like this:  On a sunny day you think it'll never rain again.  The sky is the definition of blue from horizon to horizon.  The sun is pulsing with warmth and light, lavishing its love on the lush green earth.   But then the very next day you wake up and the sun is gone. The sky is flat and gray, the rain is hard and drenching, and sogginess permeates every molecule of the material world. 

That's the way it is with those guys.  Some games are ugly.  But I don't want to think about them anymore.

I'm thinking about this instead: They're moving their legs. The ice is tilting and they're skating downhill, they're playing THEIR game, they feel the power. 

Their hard work is being rewarded.  The hits, the grit, the battles, the board-smashing, the net-crashing, the teeth-bashing mingle with the sublime.

This most-creative-of-teams merges into the flowing creative force of the universe.  Now they're rolling!

They're seeing the puck well. They're seizing every chance.  They're at the right place at the right time.  They are CREATING SPACE. 

And it doesn't matter HOW many guys the other team has on the ice!

There's a blind drop pass between the legs, or a nifty one threaded through a pair of defenders, or a chippy one from behind the net, or the long one traveling two-thirds the length of the ice, puck arriving, adhering to the stick of our brave captain on a breakaway, deking, beating the goaltender, going top-shelf…

Visualize, visualize, visualize!

It's all a fan can do.

"What can I do? It's the Olympics!" -Alex Ovechkin, my new viking hero

Alexander Ovechkin, pre-"C." Photo from hfboards.com
Maybe you've been watching some Olympic hockey.  Maybe you've seen Ovie's stupendous hit on Jaromir Jagr in the Russia/Czech Republic game on Sunday. 

In the words of Mike Emrick "talk about dictating the terms!"

In Alexander Ovechkin's words, "I know it was a strong hit, but what can I do?  It's the Olympics."

In my words, "My hero!"  

Okay, I'm not saying that this is the way we should operate in everyday life in the twenty-first century. But in Scandinavia back in the day, life was hard, almost like the winter Olympics. The weather was cold. Winters were long and dark. You could expect famine, disease and/or injury, and it was only a matter of time before you would be attacked by others who were equally as desperate as you. Survival was a pressing issue in a way that isn't these days for most of us who are just watching the games on TV. 

Being a leader meant taking care of business. Your people had to know that, when the chips were down, you would defend them and their interests to the death. And if you wanted to remain a leader, you had to earn their trust again and again. "Turning the other cheek" meant catastrophe for you and yours. Showing mercy to your enemies could result in disaster for your friends or family.  

Your neighbor's sheep are grazing on your side of the fence? Get them out of there by any means necessary! And don't miss the opportunity to teach your neighbor a lesson while you're at it. You literally can not afford to let him think that he can get away with this sort of thing. Your life, your family's lives, the lives of your entire household depend on your sheep getting enough to eat. The other guy's flock is his own problem.

Jagr at a happier moment.  Possibly a viking hero as well.  His comment on the big hit: "Of course I saw [Ovechkin coming]. I wanted to make a play...The hit doesn't hurt. The mistake hurts because they scored a goal on that play...It was a horrible feeling.  I felt like I let the guys down. But that's the sport." Quote from interview by John Dellapina and NHL.com. Photo from Wikipedia Commons. 

If Ovie had let Jagr - five-time NHL leading point scorer, seven-time NHL all-star, winner of two Stanley Cups and various other trophies - waltz uncontested into Russia's defensive zone, to a one-on-one against his goaltender, Jagr might very well have tied the game. Ovie couldn't stand idly by and let that happen. This is the Olympics, for heaven's sake! Instead, he took drastic action and his hit led directly to a fabulous pass by Semin and a goal by Malkin which brought the score to 3-1 in favor of the Russians. The Czechs never recovered.

But it's Ovechkin's comment that says it all. "What can I do?  It's the Olympics!"  
It not only expresses the sense of obligation that he felt but also a necessity, indeed, an inevitability. Yes, the hit was hard, but it had to be. There was nothing else he could do. It's almost as if the fact of it exists outside of Ovechkin himself, as an entity unto itself.  Almost as if the man is just an agent for some requirement of fate.  

In hockey as in viking-era Scandinavia, it helps if a leader is in synch with the supernatural, with fate. In the words of Washington Capitals coach Bruce Boudreau, "there are certain individuals, that...good fortune follows them...but they [also] make their own good fortune..." He was speaking of young Washington prospect John Carlson after he scored a goal in sudden-death overtime to win the World Juniors championship earlier this year - but he could have been speaking of Ovechkin.

This link with fate in no way takes away from Ovechkin's own courage and initiative - on the contrary, these were the very qualities that allowed him to act. People who don't like The Man - and there are plenty of those - will say that it's just his bravado, or his arrogance or something like that. But of course - it takes a dose of arrogance, or we could call it self-confidence - to step outside of what is commonly done and to take fate into your own hands. To be the one who takes on the responsibility to lead is to call attention, both good and bad, to yourself. Ovechkin does it so often! The remarkable thing is that his "taking care of business"  so often seems to be laced with absolute joy and lightheartedness. Maybe that's part of what allows him to "synch up" with fate so regularly.

So what else do hockey players and vikings have in common?  

• Helmets (without horns). (Unless you count goal horns.)


• Habitat (cold and ice).  


• Beards (during the playoffs).


• Beer. (Vodka?)

Ovie's mom, Olympic basketball gold medalist Tatyana Ovechkina, knows a few things about bravery and strength.  She has been quoted as saying something to this effect: "To be a hockey player, you have to be both brave and strong. Alex is brave and strong." 
That's pretty Viking-like, too. 

Vestibular neuronitis, My Judas Iscariot

So I woke up a week ago Friday, opened my eyes, and closed them again. Then I tried again. Yup, everything in the room – the pictures on the wall, the curtains, the piles of books and other assorted clutter – was spinning around and around.

After a quick mental inventory, I concluded that there was nothing wrong with me - I knew where I was, remembered my name, my responsibilities.

It was just that something had released me, set me free from the bonds that normally keep me in a close and easy interface with the world around me.

Because of my son’s sensory integration issues I’ve learned a few things about how such things work. My difficulty in getting up to walk to the bathroom pinpointed a faulty vestibular function as the culprit.

I then postulated that, overnight, a golfball-sized tumor had grown in my brain, pressing on the inner ear/vestibular nerve area, and that I would be dead within the month. The only other option might be some exotic disease picked up…well, sitting at my desk? or perhaps at the grocery store or on Metro?

In any case, I figured, I was clearly going to die, so I’d better get myself downstairs and let my husband know before he left for work.

Somehow I managed to do just that. But within a few hours I couldn’t sit up without retching horribly. In fact, I really couldn’t even open my eyes without feeling the most intense nausea. For the first few days watching someone speak was pure torture; there was simply too much unmediated sensory information entering my brain and no way for the brain to exert any organizing or integrating control.

As it turns out, I don’t have a tumor or an exotic disease. I have vestibular neuronitis, in which some virus, medievally speaking, shoots its little iron arrows at my vestibular nerve, causing an inflammation. The treatment involves a tapering dose of steroids and an awesome shaman-drum-style depiction of the "virus vs steroid" battle drawn by my seven-year-old nephew. Hopefully within a few weeks this illness will be nothing more than a nauseating memory.


But it begs the question, especially for the author of the spindlewhorl blog: Why the spinning? What causes us, when our fragile hardware becomes damaged, to perceive our world as spinning? Why don’t we perceive it as bouncing up and down, or going wavey like things do when cartoon characters reminisce?

You know me, I’d like to believe that there’s some cosmic reason. It would be cool if, when I was released from my neurological moorings I was, in addition to barfing, entering some purer state, in tune with the spinning of the cosmos. But that’s probably not the case, and even if it is, I’m here to tell you that it’s hardly worth it.

The day before this happened to me I went to hear a talk by religious historian Elaine Pagels. Her latest book, with Karen L. King, is Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity. In it she suggests that Jesus chose Judas to “betray” him so that, through his crucifixion, he could demonstrate for humanity that the suffering of the flesh is transitory and insignificant. Well, sure it’s insignificant if you happen to be Jesus!

But seriously, folks, any illness which allows you to be back on your feet, however unsteadily, and on the mend within a week, is not that bad.

But if you know, or care to theorize, why the spinning, please do share! I’m still way too dizzy to google it.

The Joy of Snow

It’s really winter now! A couple of days ago we had our first December snow, and my children were unbelievably excited. Rosy cheeks, bright eyes, the whole bit. My son even wrecked my daughter’s snowman with a snowball! Right on target!

If you have some snow to work with, try making one of these snölyktor (snow lanterns). Simply build a dome out of snowballs, leaving an opening through which you can install a votive candle or tea light. Then wait until dusk and behold!

There’s a lovely depiction of a snow lantern in Astrid Lindgren’s Jul i Bullerbyn, illustrated by Ilon Wikland. (The American version is called Christmas in Noisy Village.)

Astrid Lindgren, of course, was one of Sweden’s most beloved children’s authors. She also wrote the Pippi Longstocking books, among many others. She died in 2002 at age 94.

There are a number of books featuring The Children of Noisy Village. In them Lindgren portrays the traditional rural life of Småland, her home-province, and captures brilliantly the simple joys and whimsy of childhood. Last year I read Springtime in Noisy Village to my son’s second-grade class. I was worried that kids accustomed to Star Wars and Sponge Bob Squarepants might find Noisy Village too childlike, but they loved it.

True, it is a cliché, but this is the time of year for everyone to play at being a child again. Now get out there and—oh no! duck! Incoming snowball!

I like the ice cream at the pool better

In a couple of days I'll be on an airplane heading home to Sweden and family, ocean and rocks, lakes and woods, the beauty that I remember from girlhood and that still inspires me. But before I leave my suburban US existence behind for a few weeks, here's a silly ode to the sun-baked, chlorine-scented, sunscreen-slicked flipside of my childhood memories.


They sell ice cream at the pool.
At the front desk there's a chart with pictures
Of twelve different kinds or more.
Mom says she's got ice cream at home in the freezer
So we're not going to buy it here,
But I like the ice cream at the pool better.

I like it when the ice cream sandwiches fuzzy my fingers with chocolate
And I have to lick it off.

I like it when the rocket pop paints my lips and tongue with reddish-purply blue
And my fingers trickly drops of sticky.

I want a drumstick salty with peanuts and a hard plug of chocolate
At the bottom of the cone.

I want to bite into a premium ice cream bar and feel the chocolate sheathing split and slide
Like the earth's techtonic plates
And cool vanilla lava slipping down my throat.

I want a choco-taco
Here and now
On the hot desert concrete
By the pool
Right
Before
Dinner!

Mom says she's got ice cream at home in the freezer
So we're not going to buy it here.
But I like the ice cream at the pool better.

Virginia Woman Blogs; Receives No Comments

With all the interest in blogging and bloggers lately, we here at spindlewhorl decided it’s high time that we work up our own blogger profile.

Close at hand is blogger Leslie Spitz-Edson, 42. We caught up with her at her home, where she can often be found, sitting at her desk and wondering why she receives no comments on her blog, spindlewhorl.net.

“I just don’t get it,” she said, reflecting on possible reasons for the shunning of her blog by other cyberspace regulars.

“There’s nothing controversial on my blog. Nothing at all…well…I did once call the Soviet system a ‘purveyor of revenge on successful families and an instigator of rage, despair, murder and suicide,’” she reflected, referring to her review of The Reindeer People by Piers Vitebsky. “Sorry!” (Phone calls to Konstantin Chernenko were not returned.)

“But, honestly, there’s nothing offensive…uh…I did once review a novel by an author who once wrote a book with a lot of sex in it.” Spitz-Edson quickly pointed out, though, that the book she DID review, Jane Smiley’s The Greenlanders, has no sex in it. “Well, almost. There was one illegitimate birth. Oops!”

“There might be the odd musing about a 1000-year-old buried object, but nothing that would warrant concern about me or my soundness of mind,” she insisted. “But now that I think of it there was an awful lot of drinking on that television skit I mentioned…” What? Dinner for One?

Ms. Spitz-Edson says that she blogs mainly about her areas of interest. “I’m not trying to ride on anyone’s coattails here, or steal anyone’s thunder, or take the words out of anyone’s mouth or anything,” she insists. “Although I have to admit that Alicia Björnsdotter’s and Emma Reid’s Grovt och grant WAS already listed on another website...oh dear, I’m a bad, bad, woman!”

Recovering quickly, she added, “but really, of all the 10,600,000 Google-hits for “Jamestown”, my article is definitely the best!”

Talk about riding on coattails! Apologies to The Onion!

Rumpelstiltskin, Phone Your Office

I decided that with a blog called "spindlewhorl" I had better make an attempt at spinning. So I purchased a spindle (whorl included) from a company called Carolina Homespun. Morgaine Wilder, the owner of the company, was very helpful. I told her that I'm a novice, but I don't think she realized the full extent of my ignorance--I mean, I don't even knit or weave or crochet or anything! I know nothing about fibers or yarns and I have no particular plans for any yarn that might be born as a byproduct of my curiosity. I settled on a beginner's kit with an upgrade spindle, and I was (in theory, at least) ready to spin!

The kit came with a well-illustrated instruction book entitled, "Spin It!" I proceded through a number of steps but never managed to graduate to actually letting the spindle spin itself. I only managed to spin by rolling it down my thigh. Spinning wasn't as frustrating as I thought it would be though, because I did manage to create something approximating yarn on my first try. Unfortunately, when I took it out later to show my husband, it promptly unwound itself. Clearly something was wrong! Knowing me, I didn't read the instructions carefully enough. So for my next try I'll read them again. Also, I think that drafting was my downfall. (Drafting is pulling the fibers out of the larger mass of fiber to prepare them to be incorporated into the yarn.) I've got to work on that. I've got to keep my eye on the "drafting zone."

One reason I wanted to try spinning was to feel closer to those ancestors I was writing about in my last post. So far, I'm not sure I feel closer--but I do feel more in awe of them. It's probably not terribly difficult to produce a small amount of uneven yarn that's full of slubs (lumps), but from my current perspective it seems like it would be impossible to produce large amounts of smooth, even, strong yarn. Yet these women did it. They carded, washed, spun and wove. They were responsible for creating every item of clothing that they and their family wore (which were many, since they lived up close and personal with the Arctic Circle). The medieval Norse women also wove tapestries to warm and decorate their homes and even wove sails for the Viking longships. Imagine how much yarn and thread they needed!

Another aspect of spinning, of course, is that "cosmic" aspect that I went on about in my previous post. In case you're wondering, my first try at spinning didn't bring me into closer touch with the dance of the planets or the music of the cosmos or any such thing. But my hands are twitching to get back to that wool. I'll keep you posted.